As the dimensions of microelectronic devices become smaller, the physical characteristics of the deposited layers, including uniformity in thickness, composition, and coverage, become more important. This is particularly true of the layers, or films, of silicon compounds that can act as dielectrics or insulators to separate conductive elements of an integrated circuit. For example, silicon nitride materials are widely used in the semiconductor industry as transistor gate dielectrics, insulators between metal levels, barriers to prevent oxidation and other diffusion, hard masks, passivation layers, spacer materials in transistors, anti-reflective coating materials, layers in non-volatile memories, etc. Silicon oxide and silicon carbide materials are similarly common in integrated circuit fabrication.
Currently, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is the most commonly used process for deposition of thin layers on a substrate. With this process, precursors for molecules or atoms that will ultimately form the deposited layer are fed simultaneously into a reaction chamber as molecular precursors. The substrate is kept at a temperature that is optimized to promote chemical reaction between the molecular precursors so that a layer of the desired atomic or molecular species is deposited on the substrate. The most common molecular precursor for forming silicon-containing thin layers by conventional CVD has been silane.
CVD has proven to have a superior ability to deposit layers with relatively uniform thicknesses. In addition, it produces relatively conformal layers, i.e., layers that closely replicate the shape of the surface on which they are being deposited. However, as device density continues to increase and geometries continue to become more complicated, deposition processes have been further refined to meet the need for even more uniform and conformal layers.
For these reasons, atomic layer deposition (ALD) has become more prominent in semiconductor fabrication. ALD typically involves multiple deposition cycles, with each cycle depositing a thin layer. ALD seeks to deposit perfectly conformal and uniform layers by depositing no more than a single monolayer during each cycle. Typically, this is accomplished by use of a self-terminating precursor molecule and optimizing conditions to avoid condensation and thermal decomposition of the precursors. For example, to deposit a layer of a titanium compound, a titanium precursor molecule such as TiCl4 can be used. With TiCl4, the titanium atom attaches to the surface of the substrate while chlorine atoms terminate the adsorbed layer on the side of the titanium atom opposite the substrate surface. As a result, once the substrate surface is covered with a monolayer of the titanium molecule, the top of the titanium layer will comprise chlorine atoms which are relatively inert and cause the adsorption process to self-terminate.
In contrast to CVD, ALD molecular precursors used to produce a compound layer, i.e., a layer comprising two or more elements, are typically introduced into the ALD reactor in separate pulses. For example, a first precursor self-limitingly adsorbs on the substrate in a first pulse, with ligands of the adsorbed species preventing further adsorption. Between introduction of precursors, the reaction chamber is evacuated or purged with inert gas to prevent gas phase reactions between the different precursors. After purging of the first precursor, a second precursor can be introduced into the reaction chamber to react with the layer deposited by introduction of the first precursor, e.g., to strip the ligands or to replace the ligands. In this way, one cycle is completed and one thin compound layer is deposited on a substrate. After the layer is reacted with the second precursor, the second precursor (and any byproduct) can be removed by evacuation or inert gas purging. In addition to these precursors, other reactants can also be pulsed into the reaction chamber during each cycle. The cycle can then be repeated until a compound layer of a desired thickness is reached.
While ALD gives superior conformality and uniformity in comparison to CVD, ALD is relatively inefficient in terms of speed. Because a layer of a desired thickness must, in theory, be formed one molecular monolayer at a time (in actuality, less than one molecular monolayer is typical, due to the blocking of reactive sites as a result of steric hindrance), and because multiple steps must be employed to form each monolayer, ALD forms a layer with a given thickness more slowly than does CVD. Consequently, while conformality and uniformity is increased, ALD has the drawback of having decreased throughput in comparison to CVD.
Nevertheless, high conformality and uniformity are important considerations as semiconductor fabrication currently involves depositing silicon-containing compound films during the process of making thousands or even millions of devices simultaneously on a substrate that is 200 millimeters (mm) in diameter. Moreover, the industry is transitioning to 300 mm wafers, and could use even larger wafers in the future. In addition, even larger substrates, in the form of flat panel displays, etc., are becoming increasingly common. Significant variations in the thickness and/or composition of the silicon-containing compound films during the manufacturing process can lead to lower manufacturing yields when the affected devices do not meet required performance specifications. Also, variations across the film within a particular device can reduce device performance and/or reliability. Thus, as substrate sizes increase to accommodate manufacture of larger numbers of microelectronic devices on a circuit, the problems created by the shortcomings of conventional CVD processes also increase.
Consequently, due to the constant need for high throughput, the decreasing sizes of circuits in microelectronic devices and the increasing surface areas of substrates, there is a continuing need for methods for forming more uniform and conformal layers of silicon compounds, while also allowing for high throughput.